


Mission Complete

by skcm



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Knights of the Eternal Throne Spoilers, Knights of the Fallen Empire Spoilers, M/M, Other, Spoilers, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic Spoilers, implied past jedi knight/kira carsen & jedi knight/doc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 10:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12078789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skcm/pseuds/skcm
Summary: “Just pretend he’s here. Try it out, like you’re sending him a message on the HoloNet, even. Sometimes it helps when you think about the scariest or the saddest banthashit in the galaxy as if you’re just writing it in a text-only transmission.”-Having spent so much of his life in pursuit of Valkorion, now that the mission's over, the Alliance Commander turns to Theron Shan for help in letting go. All their shared and individual baggage gets in the way, of course, but like all (almost) stable couples, they try to navigate it together.It's just too bad that the fate of the entire galaxy rides on the Commander finding some inner peace.





	Mission Complete

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LieutenantKer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantKer/gifts).



> An interlude between the conclusion of KOTET and the return to Iokath. Spoilers, sass, stimcaf, mom jokes, and one bad OT reference ahead. I have no shame. Also, my Jedi Knight is kind of a train wreck.

It's rude to interrupt a Jedi during meditation; barging in on a spy at work is completely forgivable, however, quiet in step as the barefoot Commander is. “Your mother contacted me," Amos says to Theron, who takes his time to look up from a desk of strewn datapads and half-drunk mugs of stimcaf.

“My— what? _Why_?” He's sure of the answer already because he screens every word that reaches his Commander pre-emptively, but hopes feigning ignorance (and innocence) might finally prompt a sorely needed dialogue. It's been days of business as usual on the surface, despite Theron swearing that nine mysterious absences out of ten, Amos is locked in his quarters, juggling ragged thoughts with quiet trances in alternation, as if there's nobody left on Odessen for him to trust outside the reach of his own imagination. Outside the Force, maybe. He's hardly guessing.

Besides, in a matter of days, Eckard Lokin, Guss Tuno, and Yuun have each approached Theron in private about needing to speak to their figment of a leader, rendering the usually resourceful Shan silent with ineptitude. Slicing his boyfriend's transmissions was the least he could do for the Alliance.

At least he's here now, though, using his words and almost teetering at the edge of an uncomfortable metal chair.

“She has a way of showing up when Vitiate's causing trouble for me. You should know this by now— you’ve read my files.”

Theron has, and then some. It's in his job description.

“‘Read my files,’ my returned lover says, as if this is the limit of our communication over all these years. An old terminal somewhere in the dark depths of the Senate Tower, in a forgotten closet full of SIS dossiers about some missing hero from Tython.”

“ _Of_ Tython,” Amos corrects, disturbingly jovial.

Theron plays along. “The Hero of Tython, with whom I occasionally share a bed, with whom I _frequently_ swap bodily fluids—“

“Theron," Amos interrupts. You can't fault a man for trying to lighten the mood. "You were asking me about your mother. I was telling you about your mother."

Forcing a weak smile, Theron nods, but just to shake off his own fatigue. Their conversation is already starting to feel like a battle.of wits and this is, for once, not the time to wage a war.

"In prettier words," the Commander continues, "She said she felt it when Vitiate died— when he _actually_ died. When I killed him.”

“You mean at the Eternal family reunion?" Theron splashes more caf into his mug and finally turns to look at Amos, immediately noticing all the discomfort in his posture. He shouldn't have played along.

"I can’t say I’m envious you had to round up that whole bunch for a trip down memory lane inside your own head, and then had to contend with Master Satele blowing up your comm when you finally came to.”

“It's not like I got a holocall on the throne, Theron. Besides, I respect your mother a lot, you know."

Theron looks incredulous at that, but it's nothing beyond a projection, a wisp of a reaction he's not even sure Amos catches with the sag of a tan hood covering his face and without the confirmation that he's even bothered taking his surroundings (or Theron) in through his Force sight.

"I met her when I was a Padawan," he begins, searching for the right words as if he hasn't told the story a hundred times before on ten different agri worlds, and all across the settlements on Rishi to every native and every criminal thug in the Blaster's Path cantina. "The first time. Not the other times following that, in which she and two thirds of the Jedi Council repeatedly sent me to my almost inevitable doom for the good of everyone everywhere, but when she invited me to sit with her in meditation. Quietly. It was my first day on Tython and I felt… welcome. Home. You have no idea what it meant to me at the time, to be recognized by the Grandmaster of the Order so soon, too. Talk about an ego boost.”

He's talking at Theron rather than with him now.

“And she didn’t even have the nerve to train you," he replies, aware of the contention his quip might invoke.

“You’re joking," Amos deadpans.

“I’m joking.” Theron tries to make it sound like he's smiling even if he isn't, even if he can't.

Sinking against the back of his chair, Amos can feel the resonance of something, probably of Odessen itself. The world's neutrality boggles and frightens him still. “I wish I could talk to Master Orgus again.”

Conscious of his aim, Theron has no reason to falter. Someone in this cramped office has to open up. “Maybe you should try to anyway. Pretend _I’m_ Orgus Din. Or the remnants of his spirit. It’s up to you, Hero.”

Amos slumps forward, elbow propped on his knee. “Stop calling me that or I’m going to refer to you as the Heir of Revan until you punch me in the face.” He deserves it by now.

“I hate you so much right now." Theron is only barely exasperated.

Amos smiles and pulls one of the other ignored mugs of caf through the air with a gesture. “I know.”

Finally, it's as if Theron is being peered into, a little like the first time they met when a new presence in that stagnant meeting room on Carrick Station felt like the lick of a breeze, but it's more familiar now. “Just pretend he’s here. Try it out, like you’re sending him a message on the HoloNet, even. Sometimes it helps when you think about the scariest or the saddest banthashit in the galaxy as if you’re just writing it in a text-only transmission.”

“I was talking about your mother, though.” He can only evade this for so long.

“Work with me here for a little bit, at least," Theron requests.

“Alright. But it's because you put your hand down my pants five years ago on Yavin 4."

The eye-roll at that is warranted, but Amos persists in the exercise. "Master Orgus. I haven’t felt you since Rishi." He pauses and gulps down whatever is left in the mug. "That’s probably a good sign, for you I guess, but my boyfriend Theron Shan, that’s the son of Jedi Grandmaster Satele Shan in case you didn’t know—“

“ _Master_ Amos Thisby of the Jedi Order, the _Hero_ of Tython, the _Vanquisher_ of the Eternal Empire, the _Commander_ of the Eternal Alliance— you’re confusing your old Master. And driving me crazy, too."

“Is it really that obvious?” Amos accepts the accusation as it stings.

Theron can't help but bite a little harder. “ _What_?”

“I don’t know how to get out of _me_ , Theron." It sounds like there's an itch in his throat. "This is the most difficult conversation I’ve had in months, and I talked to the late Empress Vaylin inside _my own head_ last week. I had _breakfast_ with the former Emperor Arcann today. You remember him, right?”

Suddenly, everything feels to Theron like a speeding train he wants to disembark from. “You and Arcann had breakfast without me? I think you're making that up, Hero."

“We made an enormous pile of flatcakes for Senya. Guss helped.” Amos is an awful liar.

Theron sighs. “Uh huh."

“Arcann almost burned the mess hall down. Guss helped with that, too.”

“With collaborative skills like those, you should start sending them out on field missions together.”

The idea is so miserable to both it casts an immediate sort of awe through the air between them in the small space they share. Each take a sip from their mugs, neither with any caf left inside. Theron smiles first, but he waits for Amos to speak.

He is slow in selecting where to go next. “…Master Orgus, even though I cannot feel you, I know you are a part of me, one with the Force as I reach for it." It takes a few seconds to remember the mug is still empty after lifting it to his lips. "...For _you_. And I know it’s never going to be what I want out of trying to find you, but… I did it. Mission complete." He does not sound proud at all. "The Sith Emperor, Vitiate, Valkorion, he is _gone_."

The hollow creak of cheap metal fills the room in the bounds of a tiny silence, gap between them shrinking. "Which is, of course, why I brought up Theron’s mother to him, because she was the first to tell me that she felt his absence. That Marr felt it, too.”

“Marr again, seriously?”

Amos creaks instead of breathing somehow, and Theron only briefly cups his cheek, warm to the touch, which prompts a smile that is evidence beyond any monitoring they've made it this far.

“I think your mom’s breaking the Jedi Code with the ghost of a Dark Council member. Maybe I should put that in the message to Orgus. What do you think?”

Theron wants to kiss him, in some kind of confirmation of their mutual survival, but he knows that would close them both back up in some way, that there would be no turning back toward this honesty. “Aren’t you breaking the Jedi Code with me anyway?”

Amos shouldn't frown as deeply as he does at the kind of joke he would have laughed at from Kira or Doc in another life. “Show me a Tython before the Empire attacked it and I’ll show you a Jedi Order with a Code that feels relevant to the current disarray of the galaxy.”

“It _is_ relevant.”

This is why he loves Theron so much, isn't it?

“I know, and I _am_ breaking it, but sometimes you have to bend the rules a little until they snap prematurely, and then you know they’re brittle and that they need be built better next time."

The skin around Theron's implants crinkles a little, as do his eyes, and for a second there he reads to Amos like nothing but light. "That was pretty astute for the Hero of Tython. I thought you were all saber combat and bluster.”

It feels somehow more important for Amos to kiss him on the cheek, or at least someplace between where Theron's smile becomes his tired eyes. “You know I’m not.”

“Not entirely, at least.” Rising to his feet, granting them both a little room, Theron refills his mug with the last of the cold stimcaf and hands it over.

Amos takes a sip, used to the noxious strength of a mug of caf from Theron Shan by now, if he's used to anything at all. “Some of me is bluster. Some. Not all.”

“You were telling Master Orgus about Valkorion.”

“Master Orgus, my boyfriend says I'm not done with my letter to you yet. Vitiate is dead and nothing is the same. I don’t know if it ever will be, and I have grown to accept where I am." Amos stops to drink from the mug, one of Theron's favorites from back on Coruscant, chipped with age and definitely stolen from a colleague, but still clad with a bright blue Republic insignia.

"Because I am. Why I am remains nebulous to me, and I think that’s both liberating and terrifying at the same time. I guess that's the Force for you.”

“Why do you call him Vitiate every chance you get?” The question is sincere, earnest even.

“I called him the absent and monstrous father figure for not one but two crumbling galactic empires, as well as a broken family he was incapable of making room for in his icy heart right before his children, wife, and I ended his too-long life together."

There is something in the cockiness, something in the way Amos articulates it, as if it's a half-hearted dispensation of sage Jedi knowledge, that shatters when it reaches Theron's ears. “How are you so well adjusted after getting all that out finally?”

“I’m in denial.”

Now Theron frowns. “You would’ve done great in the SIS, you know.”

“Because I’m in outright denial over my most recent awful— no, traumatic experiences? I thought spies only lied to their targets.” Heat rises in the room. Amos scoots toward the edge of the chair again, hanging intangibly within the bounds of their conversation.

“I lie to myself all the time. I wouldn’t survive if I couldn’t trick my own thoughts into submission.” Abruptly, Theron returns the chair to its rightful position at his desk.

Something feels still all around them.

“That’s horrible, Theron.”

“I know," he admits, still standing over all the datapads in need of his attention.

Unseated, Amos drifts to Theron's side. “I love you.”

“I know," he echoes. The feeling has always been mutual.

“I’m sorry this is the galaxy we have to work with right now.” Bumping his hip against Theron's side, Amos rests the well-loved Republic insignia mug lifted from SIS HQ atop the desk, and as gently as he entered, more meekly he departs.

Theron catches him in the doorway with his words. “It’ll get better. Trust me.”

“Are you lying to yourself right now, Agent Shan?” Amos inquires so plainly that Theron deflates into his desk chair.

“Absolutely," he says, peering already into the endless scroll of text on the datapad before him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, heavy-handed foreshadowing is my forté. So is probably shipping Satele Shan and the Force ghost of Darth Marr.
> 
> I mostly set out to write this to make one of my favorite people ever cry for giving me such a terrible/wonderful idea for my canon Outlander. Love you, Ker.
> 
> Amos Thisby is a role-playing character of mine in SWTOR, a Miraluka pilot from the Order who threw in with the Alliance, but having established an AU where he is my canon Outlander, Amos played out as a generally light-sided Guardian who refused to kneel before the Emperor of Zakuul until he woke up from the carbonite nap, realizing how much Republic blood had been spilled in his relentless pursuit of a single target. Perceiving few other options left, he decides to give in and spends two expansions wracked with regret.
> 
> Listen, I... got kinda attached. Whoops.


End file.
